A golfer teed off at the now-closed Ocean Meadows Golf Course.
Paul Wellman

Ocean Meadows Golf Course officially closed for good last week, as the longtime owner — a Los Angeles-based, 82-year-old attorney named Mark Green, who purchased the course in 1994 — officially received a $7 million offer for about 63 acres of land in a conservation deal spearheaded by the Trust for Public Land. The trust plans to convey the land to UCSB soon and help raise another $10 million to restore the property into a functional and educational wetland. Many golfers, particularly senior players, are lamenting the loss of the only regulation, flat, and relatively affordable nine-hole course in southern Santa Barbara County, but many others — including some of those very same golfers — are happy to know that the land will remain open space accessible to the public. Though a number of factors conspired against his dream to “build the finest nine-hole golf course in the country,” Green will retain about seven acres of land along the first and third holes, and he hopes to break ground on a 28-unit housing development there within 12 months.

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